@FriedrichPieter's Threads

The #Gandhi statue in #WashingtonDC was apparently vandalized today by #BLM/#GeorgeFloyd protestors. Reportedly, they spray-painted "racist" on the statue's base. Could it be because Gandhi wrote that Indians are "undoubtedly infinitely superior to the Kaffirs"? #RacistGandhi

For an in-depth conversation about Gandhi's racism, read this interview by @thecaravanindia with Dr. Obadele Kambon, the professor at University of Ghana who was instrumental in the removal of a Gandhi statue from his campus.

Here’s a video I produced with @OFMIorg featuring @jadafromnola about how #Gandhi hated being identified w/blacks, worked 4 racial segregation in pre-apartheid South Africa, & wanted to preserve the purity of the races. #RacistGandhi

The religious nationalist political ideology of Hindutva was first articulated by VD Savarkar, whose brother was one of the five people who co-founded the #RSS. Another co-founder was BS Moonje. He was the mentor of yet another co-founder, KB Hedgewar, who became...

... the paramilitary’s first Supreme Leader. All three — Savarkar, Moonje, and Hedgewar — were also leaders in the Hindu Mahasabha, a religious nationalist political party formed in 1915. They embraced the idea that, to quote @HartoshSinghBal, the subcontinent “had seen...

No longer is #Modi merely the “Butcher of Gujarat” — under the reign of his #RSS regime, he has become the Butcher of India.... Fascism is not rising in India — it has risen. And the threat of genocide looms large.

Full vid: Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos

Since #Modi rose to power as the Butcher of Gujarat, it was no secret how he would govern India nor should it be any surprise that his administration is now marked by extreme violence. Nor should we be shocked that India is on the brink of genocide. Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos

A legal method for cleansing the country of Muslims is exactly what the #BJP intended the #CAA and the #NRC to provide.

And they’ve made no secret of it. Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos

Speaking at @UCLA about #RSS, its importance, its violence & its origins:

"Violence in which RSS is implicated includes assassinations, bombings & even pogroms against Christians, Muslims, & anyone who stands up against its xenophobic agenda."

Full vid: Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos

@UCLA "It’s no surprise that the #RSS is responsible for such shocking violence considering its ideological ties to European fascism.... The correlation between fascism in the West and Hindu nationalism in the East traces all the way back to the paramilitary’s origins in the 1920s." Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos

@UCLA “'Traditional muscle power of the #BJP has always been the #RSS,' said a former US ambassador to India. Its role is much broader than that, tho. Today, the RSS doesn’t just provide boots on the ground to help win elections — it pulls the strings of the party’s elected officials." Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos

@USAndMumbai On 6 February 2020, Consul General David Ranz of the U.S.'s Mumbai consulate visited the K.B. Hedgewar memorial in Nagpur, Maharashtra to pay homage to him as the first chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Ranz’s visit condones the RSS paramilitary as well as its...

@USAndMumbai ... ideological and institutional inspiration by European fascist movements like those of Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. Its earliest leaders praised Nazi racial policies and said that Indian Muslims should be treated like German Jews. They demanded that India be...

Did you know the 1st genocide of 20th century was conducted in the Congo by King Leopold II of Belgium, who orchestrated the killing of up to 15,000,000 Congolese in order to exploit the region’s natural resources for his personal profit?

Did you know that, 32 years after his reign ended, his grand-nephew, King Leopold III, was captured and imprisoned in Nazi-occupied Belgium while London hosted Belgium’s “government-in-exile”?

Did you know the first concentration camps of the 20th century were established in South Africa by the British Empire during the Second Boer War when the British went to war with the Boers — Dutch settlers — to expropriate their land?

This article deals with virtually nothing in my Caravan piece about #TulsiGabbard. It begins labeling me — w/out a shred of evidence — a "Khalistani separatist" & expands by ignoring every one of the major organizations I dealt with in my article, including OFBJP, HSS, & VHPA.

It doesn't even mention the BJP. It doesn't mention the name "Ram Madhav" even once despite Madhav being a main character in my article, it doesn't mention #TulsiGabbard's opposition to H. Res. 417 or the human rights hearing — or how HSS/OFBJP fundraised 4 her on her opposition.

It falsely states that I connect #TulsiGabbard to the RSS via Hindu American Foundation, an org that plays a minor role in my article — yet I actually connect her to the RSS via her intimate relationship w/key HSS/OFBJP/VHPA executives & participation in RSS affiliated events.

Speaking at #AdiosModi protest of #HowdyModi about how Modi's totalitarian regime is crushing freedom of expression & thought throughout India — raiding homes of professors, writers, activists to interrogate them about the books they own or their pictures of Ambedkar on the wall. Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos

While naked & homeless children survive only by begging in the streets of Delhi, the capital of India, that nation's autocratic ruler just squandered over $2.5 million for a 3-hour spectacle with no other purpose than to whitewash his blood-drenched history. #HowdyModi#AdiosModi Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos

We need to thank the American politicians who heroically refused to attend this event today. I want to name some names. That includes people like Congressman @BradSherman & @RepAlGreen. #HowdyModi#AdiosModi Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos

My 18,000 word profile of #TulsiGabbard is now outside paywall & free to read. It offers a bio sketch of her, w/focus on her early years in Congress to trace her financial & other support from US affiliates of the RSS, a history of RSS in USA, & more.

"From May 2011 to August 2012, the surge of funds from Sangh sources, combined with previous donations from [Science of Identity Foundation] sources, totalled over twenty percent of donations to Gabbard’s campaign—about $190,000 out of $923,000."

In 2013, "about $112,600 of Gabbard’s itemised individual donations—20.7 percent—came from Sangh & pro-Modi sources. Over ninety thousand dollars of that was given in June & July alone. She attended five Sangh fundraisers in four states. Her donors included 28 Sangh executives."

@tmturkee "The Indian media, it's corrupt. The narrative that's in the mainstream media is totally corrupt because they tell you a one-side story.... They tell you that everything perfectly fine in #Kashmir. How can everything be fine when people are not allowed to go out?" #KashmirBleeds Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos

Of note: Jammu & Kashmir was joined to India in 1947, after the last dynastic monarch, Hari Singh Dogra, ceded control to the newly-formed Republic. Dogra dynasty's control of J&K began after first Dogra, Gulab Singh, was awarded the monarchy for betraying Sikh Empire to British.

The downfall of the Sikh Empire began when Maharaja Ranjit Singh “passed on the levers of power to the hands of Dogras.” A British Government report adds, “Much of the trouble, too, that befell the Sikh Government after Ranjit Singh’s death may be traced to the inordinate...

... power he had permitted his favorites to acquire.... Foremost in influence and ability of the favorites were the three Dogra brothers from Jammu: Gulab Singh, Dhian Singh, and Suchet Singh.”

The Dogras eventually “usurped to themselves the whole of the functions of govt.”

As calls continue for German Ambassador Walter Lindner to resign, let's consider a little of the fruit produced by "Hindutva," the religious nationalist political ideology of the Nazi-inspired #RSS paramilitary Lindner paid respects to. #ResignLindner

Over the past 20 years, various governmental and non-governmental organizations have repeatedly warned that the Sangh Parivar (umbrella term for RSS affiliates) perpetrates acts of violence against India’s religious minorities. Much could be added about various...

... terrorist acts which are linked to Sangh groups. Similarly, a great deal could be said about legislation passed to implement the Hindutva agenda. Even more could be said about routine, daily acts of violence. Instead, let’s focus for the moment only on the reports by...

Golwalkar believed that being Indian meant being Hindu. So he wrote, “Only the Hindu has been living here as the child of this soil.” Just in case his reader misunderstood his intentions, he also phrased it another way...

... “We repeat: in Hindustan, the land of the Hindus, lives & should live the Hindu Nation.” Golwalkar thought the only true Indian “patriots” were people who aspired to “glorify the Hindu race and Nation,” claiming, “All others are… traitors & enemies to the National cause.”

Evidence actually suggests that the Mughals became far more "Brahmanized" than many of the religious nationalist of modern-day India would prefer to remember. This traces at least back to the 3rd Mughal Emperor, Akbar, & rapidly increased. Like his father, Akbar, Jahangir...

... surrounded himself with “Sanskrit thinkers.” His son, Shah Jahan, pursued the same policy. As these Brahman collaborators swelled the ranks of the Mughal courts, the Emperors increasingly came under the influence of Brahmanical culture. Twice annually, on their solar and...

lunar birthdays, members of the Imperial family participated in the tuladan, a weighing ceremony described by Islamic culture expert Father Michael Calabria as “the central ritual of the imperial Hindu kingdom in the eighth century.” According to Fr. Calabria, “By offering his...

Why, in the midst of so much hand-wringing over evils of Mughals (&, while I do believe they contributed many great things to the Indian subcontinent, they were also oppressive rulers), there is no criticism of the countless upper-caste administrators & soldiers who collaborated?

Birbal and Bhagwant Das were generals under Akbar. Todar Mal was the Chief Finance Minister under Akbar. Jagannath was a poet under Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Raghunath was a Finance Minister (eventually Chief Finance Minister) under Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb....

I'll join. I have an idea. Let's do a film. Opening scene: Dr. BS Moonje, a Brahmin doctor from Nagpur, stands surveying the Altare Della Patria (Altar to the Fatherland) — site of grand military parades — from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome. Beside him is Mussolini.

Opening line: Moonje turns to Mussolini. "I have no hesitation to raise my voice from the public platform both in India and England whenever occasion may arise in praise of your Balilla and Fascist organizations," he says. The Italian dictator grins. He says, "We made a new man."

Dialogue continues. "We discovered how to combine the mystical side and the political side," Mussolini tells Moonje. "After we added the element of discipline, it was a simple matter to convince the the citizens that they had nothing except the life of the State." Moonje smiles.

So what did #Savarkar write? “We Hindus must have a country of our own,” wrote Savarkar. “Truly Hindus are and cannot but be the mainstay of our Indian State.” He insisted that anyone living in India is, de facto, a Hindu — that is, that being Indian meant being Hindu.

#Savarkar wrote, “If you call it an Indian Nation it is merely an English synonym for the Hindu nation to us Hindus, Hindusthan and India mean one and the same thing. We are Indians because we are Hindus and vice versa.”

@theintercept@TulsiGabbard@ggreenwald Tulsi Gabbard's congressional career was created by financing from US affiliates of the RSS, VHP, & BJP. The BJP (the ruling party) is the political wing of the RSS, a paramilitary founded in 1925 & modeled after the European fascist movements. VHP is the RSS's religious wing.

@theintercept@TulsiGabbard@ggreenwald 33-year RSS leader Golwalkar (1940-1973) praised Nazi Germany's racial policy & compared Indian Muslims to German Jews. He further called non-Hindus in India "traitors." Modi was 21 in 1971 when he became a full-time worker 4 RSS (while it was still led by Golwalkar).

@theintercept@TulsiGabbard@ggreenwald The RSS is accused of at least 10 major pogroms since 1969. These include the 1969 Gujarat Riots (400+ Muslims killed), which occurred a few months after Golwalkar demanded a Hindu Nation at a three-day rally near the state’s capital, Ahmedabad.....